


Bloody Poetry

by BellumGerere



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cauterizing a wound, Definitely Just A Cold, Flashbacks, Gen, Parting Words Regret, Wound That Would Not Heal, badthingshappenbingo, prompt fills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-07-04 11:26:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15840318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellumGerere/pseuds/BellumGerere
Summary: Prompt fills for badthingshappenbingo. Mostly Witcher and Dishonored, but other fandoms may sneak in. Tags/characters/etc will be updated as needed!(I'm trying to alternate fandoms so odd-numbered chapters are Dishonored and even-numbered chapters are Witcher. The order the prompts are filled is the order they appear in the tags, starting with 'wound that would not heal')





	1. The Empty Set (Dishonored - Wound That Would Not Heal)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so there's.....A Lot of things happening here. i know that (at the time of me writing this) i still have 'grand words' to finish and edit, not to mention the frankly ridiculous backlog of prompts already in my inbox, but i saw someone else doing this challenge and it sounded so interesting that i couldn't resist. for those unfamiliar, the basic concept is participants get a 'bingo card' where each square is a prompt, and the goal is to fill them out in such an order that you get a bingo - or, if you're an overachiever like me, finish the card and do every prompt. the card i received is on my tumblr (yennas) if anyone's curious what prompts i got, and i'll be posting an updated version with every chapter crossing off the ones i've finished! y'all are also more than welcome to request some of the prompts with certain characters/pairings, though i'd ask that you limit the fandoms to witcher or dishonored, since that's just what i feel most comfortable writing right now
> 
> also, i know that right now with only this first prompt up there are no witcher fills even though it's in all the witcher feeds, but don't worry - i've already gotten several as prompts with witcher characters and have ideas for more! this is just the first idea i had that felt concrete enough that i thought i could write it the way it feels in my mind. in addition to chapter titles i'm going to list the prompt and the fandom so if y'all want to skip to a certain prompt when i've got more of them up, or only read for one of the fandoms, it'll be easy to do so -bel

The last thing she remembers seeing is Corvo’s face.

Glazed over in the wash of red that covered her vision, it is, spotted with blood and with considerably more emotion in the expression than she is used to seeing out of him in public. And that _is_ where they are, after all, right in the middle of the gazebo where anyone could come across them. She wants to reprimand him, remind him that the guards will be back at any moment and finding the Empress in the arms of her Royal Protector will only confirm the rumors that have been flying around court for the past decade. Neither of them needs that—but she knows, in the back of her mind, that it’s a ridiculous thing to be thinking, that appearances shouldn’t matter when she still feels the phantom blade twisting in her gut and she knows she only has moments left.

Emily. She needs to be thinking about Emily.

She is finding it increasingly difficult to think about anything at all.

~

The Outsider cuts her heart from her chest, and there, in the Void, the hole still bleeds.

~

 _The heart of a living thing_ , he calls it when he gives it to Corvo, but from where she is watching it doesn’t look like one. He’s….modified it, she supposes that’s the word for it, until she can barely recognize it as human, let alone hers. But it has to be. Corvo grips it tighter in his hand and she feels the pull in her empty chest, tugging her towards him, coaxing words from somewhere deep in her. Things she doesn’t know she knew.

And she knows— _everything_ , suddenly, the force of the knowledge so strong that she can hardly breathe. (She tries not to think too hard about what it means that she still has some kind of physical form here. Thinking about that would lead to hope, something she can’t afford.) Corvo’s fingers, when he strengthens his hold on the heart—her heart—are slightly crooked, and even though she hasn’t seen them, she is painfully aware of the new scars on his arms, of the burns. Six months in Coldridge Prison have not been kind to him. She wonders if he ever thought of her when he was there. In the way his eyes widen when he hears her whispers, the way he stumbles slightly, losing his footing every time she speaks, she finds her answer.

 _What have they done to you?_ Even as she says the words, feels her vocal chords shift and vibrate with them, they drift away, lost in the Void with the rest of her. She can feel pieces of herself dissolving slowly, starting at the corners of her consciousness and working their way inward towards the ragged edges of the wound. She doesn’t know what she is becoming, but soon, she fears, there will be very little of Jessamine Kaldwin left.

~

Sometimes, he sleeps with her heart clutched in his hand, pulled close to his chest as though he wishes he could tear his own out and replace it with hers. Those are the only nights he sleeps peacefully. On those nights, she sits on what passes for ground in the Void, great slabs of some black rock she wouldn’t be able to put a name to even if she cared to try, unbuttoning her blouse and pulling it far open enough that she can examine the dip between her breasts. It looks just as red and angry as it had the day the Outsider had put it there—the only time she’s seen him, even here in his realm. (It seems, she thinks, that his apparent proclivity for meddling in the lives of humans, at least, if the Abbey is to be believed, does not extend to an interest in those already dead.) If she looks closely enough, she can see the slick sheen of her ribs through layers of muscle. If she runs her fingers around the edge of the hole, they come back red and damp.

Sometimes she tries to call out to—someone, anyone. Corvo, the Outsider, Emily. Just the thought of her daughter, taken by assassins and locked up who-knows-where, makes the hole pulse with pain, and she wonders if her own heart beats any more unevenly in return, if Corvo can tell the difference. He doesn’t seem to be paying as much attention lately. His focus is unwaveringly on the living. She wonders if he simply can’t allow himself the luxury of remembering her, if thinking about her for even one unguarded moment would mean breaking down completely.

She isn’t sure if she is imagining it, or if the mask has truly…changed him somehow. Made him not the Corvo Attano she had known, but some strange foreign thing, a man whose penchant for senseless violence is going to tear the whole city apart if he isn’t careful. Somewhere deep down, past the ragged edges of her flesh, she knows she should care. It’s _her_ city that’s crumbling, after all, _her_ hard work that’s going up in flames, washing away in rivers of plague-infected blood. But it’s difficult for her to care about anything except the feeling of his rough fingers when he runs them over the heart, staring at the gears inside as if he will see her if he looks closely enough. These days, it is the only thing that tethers her to the world of the living.

~

One night, when he returns from the Boyle mansion and collapses onto his thin mattress in the attic of the Hound Pits, he is less reluctant to hold what is left of her. He presses his lips to the thin glass covering the hole in her heart and she can tell he is shaking. “I killed her,” he whispers, his breath fogging the glass. “I killed her, Jessa. I didn’t mean to. I just—she figured out who I was, and she would’ve screamed if I hadn’t—”

He sighs, lets the hand holding her drop to the threadbare green blanket he’s lying on top of. “More people would be dead if I hadn’t done it,” he says, more to himself than to her (does he even realize she can hear him, that some part of her consciousness still exists to hear in the first place? She doubts it). “It was the only way.”

She can hardly feel the tip of her tongue anymore—the sensation in most of her extremities faded long ago, and she grows closer to true nothingness every day—but somewhere on it is a dry remark about how, after all the guards he’s murdered or left unconscious to be eaten by rats, after he branded the High Overseer and left the Pendleton twins to rot in their own mine, after he’s seen firsthand the drastic rise in the city’s weeper population as a nearly direct result of his actions, it’s killing _Waverly Boyle,_ of all people, that has made him feel even the slightest bit of guilt. If she were alive she would have told him that, she’s sure, but she’s trying to focus on the sensation of his skin and she realizes, with something of a jolt, that he’s not wearing his signet ring anymore.

It makes sense. He’s the most wanted man in the Isles, and besides, they’d probably taken it from him before he even landed in Coldridge Prison anyway. But it’s this, more than anything else, that makes her realize she will never get him back.

~

Only once had Jessamine Kaldwin visited Kingsparrow Island when she was alive, back when the construction on the lighthouse was just beginning, but even as she is now, a piece of preserved muscle tucked inside the Royal Protector’s worn-down coat, she can feel that things are different. This is no longer just a lighthouse, it’s a veritable fortress, with defenses to rival the Tower itself, and Corvo cuts through them all like they are nothing, reprogramming Sokolov’s horrible devices with a skill she didn’t know he possessed and leading the people he believes to be his enemies right into their traps. They die in instants, vaporized into nothing. They are not even people to him anymore, she thinks. Only obstacles.

 _Everyone knows you were screwing the Empress,_ she hears Treavor Pendleton say when Corvo finds him, badly hurt in the gatehouse. She never knew the youngest Pendleton in life; his brothers had been the ones in Parliament, and Treavor rarely appeared at functions where they were also in attendance. It is the first thing she has ever heard him say. It is also the last. The crossbow bolt that Corvo places neatly next to the bullet hole ensures that. She still has a body in this damned Void, even if she can barely feel it anymore, and when she looks down, the front of the shirt she is wearing—the shirt she died in—is soaked crimson.

The new High Overseer, Teague Martin, is the only one who does not die by Corvo’s hand. By now, she is too tired to be surprised.

~

He saves Emily. She will give him that much. Without him, she would have been dragged right off the top of the lighthouse, dying with those who had conspired to save her. Corvo’s coat is soaked through with more than just rain as Emily embraces him. It has only been a few months, but she looks….different than Jessamine remembers. Older, and not just in years.

“The others are all dead, aren’t they?” Emily says. The sound of her voice is so familiar it makes what is left of her _ache,_ but the tone is all wrong. The words are all wrong. And all she can do is watch, a sick dread rising where her heart used to be. “That’s alright. I was going to have them killed anyway.” She grips Corvo’s hands tighter. “ _I’m_ going to be Empress.”

Somewhere, deep in the Void, the hole that has burrowed its way into Jessamine Kaldwin pulsates and bleeds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ever since i played this game for the first time, a couple things have really interested me: a high-chaos corvo who still neutralizes (almost) all of his targets through non-lethal means, and the idea that jessamine can definitely see everything that is going on, if parts of her are still present enough to be in the second game. this is kind of my first attempt to write about those things, but there will probably be more in he future. anyway i'll be over on tumblr crying about how jessamine deserved better if anyone would like to join me


	2. Under the Knife (Witcher - Cauterizing a Wound)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is the first of the squares i got as a prompt on tumblr, specifically requesting a situation with geralt and ciri. we're going with the 'ciri as empress' ending of tw3 here simply because i wanted the fact that they're out hunting monsters or whatever to be a rarer occurrence than it would be in the 'ciri as a witcher' ending. this is post-blood and wine also, but the ending there wouldn't really have an impact on this, so imagine whichever one you want -bel

“Geralt, are you really sure this is necessary?”

He stilled with a bottle of White Gull in one hand and a strip of cloth torn from a spare shirt in the other, his quest to sterilize the end of his knife momentarily forgotten. When Yennefer had insisted he take it (“you never know what you’ll run into out there,” she’d said, with a very pointed glance at some of his nastier scars), he’d thought she was just being ridiculous. Overprotective. Which he supposed she could afford to be, now that they’d settled down for good and put the past behind them. Ciri seemed to think the same thing—he was a witcher, after all, and she was more than proficient with a blade, so what extra protection could they need? He was glad he had it now, though. This would be far more difficult to do with a sword.

“Yes, it’s necessary.” He didn’t look over at Ciri as he spoke, choosing to focus instead on dousing the cloth in White Gull and running it over the blade. He’d made a small fire a few feet away from them—nothing huge, but enough for this purpose, and besides, he fully expected to be there for at least a couple of hours, until the pain faded enough for Ciri to walk. He would make sure they stayed. She would probably want to go right away, and he wouldn’t have any of that.

This had been done to him once before. He had been young, and far more careless than he was now, and when a basilisk’s talon slashed his arm he shrugged the injury off, bandaged it hastily and kept fighting. It wasn’t until nearly an hour later that he suddenly realized he’d lost so much blood that he could barely stand. He had been lucky, then. Eskel had been with him, had known what to do and been much calmer about it than Geralt was, when he realized what the small blade he’d been heating over the flames was for.

Ciri was, quite decidedly, not calm.

“You can’t—I don’t know—give me some Swallow or something? Just a little bit? What’s the chance it would _really_ do any damage?” she whined. He could hear her shifting behind him, moving so she could get a better look at the slash on her upper thigh. She had been incredibly lucky, already, that it hadn’t hit anything major _,_ that the only reason they had to do this was because they were half a day from the nearest large town and this was safer than bandaging it and hoping she didn’t bleed out on the way there. She’d have a new scar, but when had that ever bothered a witcher? ( _She’s not a witcher, she’s the Empress of Nilfgaard_ , a voice in his head whispered, but he ignored it. Considering its placement, no one in court would ever see it anyway.)

“Very high. And even if it didn’t, it might still hurt more than this will,” Geralt said, holding up the knife that he’d just finished sterilizing before he held the tip out over the small fire, turning it over to make sure it heated evenly. With his free hand, he rummaged around in his pack until he extracted the bottle of wine that had been gifted to them by the vintner they’d just finished a contract for, and passed it to her.

“Here. It’s not very strong, but it’s better than nothing. It’ll distract you, at least.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly, but a moment later he heard her uncork the bottle and take a long drink. He let himself smile for a moment before returning his attention to the knife, waiting another minute to withdraw it from the flames and fully turn to her. He had expected it would be more difficult to look, but the expression on her face had changed from the fear he last saw to one of grim determination, one that looked far less out of place on her.

The wound itself didn’t look as awful as it had earlier, though it was still wide, and gods-knew-how deep, and sluggishly bleeding. Some of his own scars twinged in sympathy just from looking at it. But he couldn’t let her see that. By this point, she was surely old enough that seeing him panic wouldn’t be enough to set her off as well, but he didn’t want to take that chance.

“Let this be a lesson to you,” he said gruffly instead, pulling aside the torn edges of her trousers so he would be able to position the blade where it needed to be. “Pay more attention. You can’t rely on your powers for everything.”

“How was I supposed to know there would be a _bruxa_ in that cave?” she scoffed, rolling her eyes. He didn’t reply, reaching instead back into his pack to pull out a strip of leather for her to bite down on. He was glad, now that he’d brought it, as he was with the knife—at the time, he simply hadn’t thought it worth the bother of taking it out of the pack. Ciri took the strip, looking at it distastefully. “Is it really going to hurt _that_ much?”

“It might.” It was nothing, he supposed, compared to a cut on one’s face—he would know—but he didn’t want to underestimate the amount of pain she’d be in. Better to take every precaution. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be, I suppose.” She put the strip between her teeth and closed her mouth around it. She grabbed the blanket she was lying on to anchor herself, balling up the fabric in her fists. He watched as she took a deep breath, then nodded at him.

He was thankful, not for the first time, for his ability to keep his hands steady as he pressed the knife to her skin, counting to a slow three and then pulling away as quickly as he could, praying it was enough. His ears were ringing in what he was sure was an unconscious attempt to block out her screams, and he tried to ignore the smell of burning flesh, instead focusing on her fists as they slowly uncurled. She reached up and pulled the strip of leather out from between her teeth, letting it drop to the blanket.

“You okay?”

“I think so.” She was staring resolutely at a spot above his head, forcing herself not to look down. “I’ll be fine, anyway. If we rest for a bit.”

He nodded, setting the blade down near the fire to be cleaned later. He couldn’t stand to look at it now. They were quiet for a few moments, as he examined the wound to make sure it had sealed properly. Then—

“Geralt?”

“Yeah?”

She finally looked back down to meet his eyes and exhaled roughly. “What are we going to tell Yennefer?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't actually know one single thing about cauterization besides what i looked up to write this so sorry if anything is inaccurate lol
> 
> my bingo card is on my tumblr (yennas) if you search the tags 'bloody poetry' or 'badthingshappenbingo' if you want to make a request! i have a few more already planned (i can post a version with those marked off if anyone wants) but there are a lot of squares still open!


	3. Two Days Early (Dishonored - Parting Words Regret)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow.......more of This (by This i mean corvojess and pain ajdklajkafl)

It wasn’t until his fourth month at Coldridge Prison that it truly hit him that Jessamine was gone.

Being locked up in the highest security wing had, ironically, given him plenty of distractions, excuses not to think about it. He was alone in his cell, but there was a constant stream of guards coming and going all hours of the day and night—not that he could tell which was which, anyway, considering he didn’t have a window. Still, there was no shortage of things to look at. He memorized all the guards’ routes, figured out which one was which under their helmets. Their voices all sounded the same in the great echo chamber of the main hall, but he learned to tell them apart by the patterns in their speech and the heaviness of their footsteps. Useful information if he wanted to break out, though he’d given up hope of that months ago.

The only time he was even out of his cell was when he was escorted to the interrogation room by an ever-revolving retinue of at least four guards. If his sense of the passing of time was still accurate, it was a weekly occurrence which lasted for hours. Burrows himself often made time to be there, as did the High Overseer, and lately, they had both become more and more insistent that he confess. To sign the papers for a crime he didn’t commit. To lay his head quietly on the block.

He complied, in a certain sense of the word. If they wanted him to go quietly, then quietly he would go.

This approach, despite the satisfaction it brought him to see Campbell and Burrows’ frustration with him increase, was not the easiest on his body. It started with his fingers, bruised and broken under increasingly large hammers. Unlike the others, the torturer didn’t seem to care much whether or not he made it through the interrogation in one piece. As long as he could hold a pen well enough to sign a confession, he would be deemed fine. Sometime recently, though, he’d apparently decided hammers weren’t enough. Then the irons came out.

At first, the burns were confined to his upper arms—not too noticeable, easy to hide with the coat they hadn’t even bothered to take from him when they threw him in the cell. (They must have been confident, he thought, in their ability to break prisoners so thoroughly that escape would be the last thing on their minds.) Lately, though, their location changed with every session—his forearms, his thighs, the crooks of his elbows and knees. Those were the words; he had usually only just regained the ability to bend one of his limbs without pain when they’d bring him back and ruin another one.

It was on one of those days, when he was thrown back into his cell with marks up and down his left arm, that he truly realized what had happened. The thought had slipped, unbidden, into his mind—if Jessamine could see him like this, she would be furious. She’d find the torturer and have him removed from his post, or worse, and she’d insist on tending to his wounds herself, as best she could, despite what others might say.

But none of those things would happen. Jessamine was gone. And he might as well have killed her himself, because he had let her die.

~

The last time he’d gotten to see her— _truly_ see her, alone and unbound by her status, they had fought. It had become, after more than a decade of doing it, laughably easy to find a way into her chambers and remain unseen. By that point it had also become a near-nightly occurrence, and the other guards had stopped asking questions about where he went at night, though the rumors continued to spread, volatile as ever. Though the whispers when he walked down the tower halls and the side-eyed glances he got from members of Parliament had by no means decreased in number, Corvo had gotten so used to them that he didn’t let that deter him from spending as much time as he could get away with in Jessamine’s chambers.

Most nights, it seemed he wasn’t the only one who thought that way. But two days before he got on a ship and left Dunwall, when she’d sat him down on the bed and given him the news, he suddenly wasn’t so sure.

“I—” He had to pause, clear his throat as quietly as he was able, because she’d well and truly caught him off-guard. There was no reason for her to be sending him away, not now, not like this. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Jessamine sighed, turning from where she’d been standing in front of him to pace the length of the bedroom. She was always pacing when she was upset. “Corvo, if I thought I could send anyone else, I would,” she said, and the way his name sounded on her lips momentarily distracted him yet again, as it did every time she referred to him as anything other than _Lord Protector_ , even in private. “But I fear there’s no one here I can trust like you. The whole Empire is watching, waiting to see what I’ll do in response to the plague.”

“Which is exactly why I should be here. With you.” _You and Emily_ , he thought, though it remained unsaid. Some part of him had always been reluctant to acknowledge the truth of that matter. If he didn’t say it, if he didn’t even think it, then no one else would find out, and that would be safer for all of them. He held tight to that notion, ridiculous as it was. “Anyone could decide that now is the perfect time to strike out at you.”

“If I do nothing. If I barricade myself in the Tower and wait it out, and see what’s left of the city afterwards.” She stopped by the window for a moment, hovering unsteadily. The room was stiflingly hot, but they were both reluctant to crack the windows, as if the plague could spread through air, creep into their lungs. For all they knew, it could. It seemed every day that some new symptom presented itself in the unfortunate people it took down.

“But if I send my own Lord Protector…” She turned around, walked the length of the bed so she could cup his face between her palms, surprisingly cold. “They’ll know I’m taking this seriously.”

He didn’t want to react to her like this—like her speaking to him in that tone, touching him so gently, meant that everything would be fine—especially when he knew it wouldn’t. But it was hard, harder than anything he’d ever done, to look up at those pleading blue eyes and remain unmoved. “Perhaps a little too seriously.”

She drew back, raising her eyebrows, as if startled by the sudden turn in him. More convincing than he’d thought, apparently. “I—Corvo, you can’t possibly be angry about this—”

“I’m not.” And that much was true, at least; he could never be truly mad at her, not when she thought she was making the right decision. “I…understand. But that doesn’t mean I like it.”

A laugh escaped her, though it sounded brittle, as though it would break at any moment. She didn’t smile. “I didn’t expect you to,” she said quietly. “But I don’t see any other way.”

They were silent for a few minutes, both not quite looking at each other, though not away, either. She was the first one to break, moving to sit beside him as she reached up to pull the pins out of her hair—a sign of how much she’d been thinking about it, if she hadn’t already taken them out. She wasn’t acting like she expected him to stay, but he knew she wouldn’t want him to leave. She would want him to spend as much time with her as possible before he got on the boat—but suddenly, he couldn’t sit in that stifling room any longer, couldn’t look over and see how close she was to tears.

“I should start preparing, then,” he said, and she didn’t try to stop him when he stood and slid one of the windows open, sliding out onto the ledge beyond it with practiced ease. There were no last-minute words, thrown hurriedly behind her, and when he turned around to look at her one last time, she was already gone.

~

They barely exchanged two words on the day he left Dunwall, too concerned with appearances and the sensitive nature of his journey, but she did make one small concession: she wore her hair down.

~

“This is your final chance, Corvo,” Campbell said, looking down at where he was shackled in the chair while Burrows paced back and forth behind him, occasionally stopping to lean over the desk. “Sign the confession and let me give you the rites to put your spirit at ease.”

If he hadn’t already decided not to say a word to either of them, that he would either die silent or not die at all, he would’ve told Campbell exactly what he thought of his rites—of the whole damned Abbey, for that matter. But the torturer put the iron to his arm, in the crook of his right elbow, and he couldn’t help but groan out in pain, his voice rough from months of disuse. The sound caused Burrows to look up from whatever he’d been so steadfastly examining. “That’s enough for now,” he said, dismissing the torturer with a wave of his hand. “Get out. Let’s give the man some time to think.”

_I’ve already had all the time I need_ , he thought. Part of him wished they would just get it over with. Shoot him and be done with it. Death couldn’t possibly be more painful than what he was experiencing now—the physical pain of new and barely-healed burns, and the memory of Jessamine a deep, blunted ache in his chest. Would things have gone any differently if he had refused? If he had told her over and over again that it was a bad idea until, maybe, she believed him? Or would Burrows have still chosen that moment to grasp at power, and he would be sitting here no matter what?

It was hard to think about that. Hard to think about anything. So instead he let himself fade into the throbbing of the new burns, Burrows droning on in front of him, and the blessedly quiet recollection of Jessamine’s voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh i'm not nearly as happy with this one as i am with 'the empty set' but here we are anyway. might try and expand on this one later if i have time because it feels a bit cramped
> 
> anyway i'm still taking prompts on tumblr! (i might need to post another updated version of my card to avoid doubles though...whoops)


	4. Night and Day (Witcher - Flashbacks)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo technically nightmares and flashbacks are two totally different things but these are flashback-y nightmares so i'm saying it counts. and it counts double if they bleed over into the daytime too right?? anyway to save time we're just gonna say that this takes place in the same universe as 'under the knife' except now the ending of b&w matters and it's the one where dettlaff dies (or one of them anyway) -bel

It was hard for Geralt to get a full night’s sleep at Corvo Bianco. He didn’t know exactly why it was—he was, financially speaking, more secure than he’d ever been in his life, not to mention more comfortable, with an entire vineyard to call his own. Ciri was safe in Nilfgaard, or as safe as one could be in Nilfgaard, and she visited more often than he suspected Emhyr was aware of. And Yennefer—Yennefer was always next to him, and they hadn’t truly fought in months, and some part of him was beginning to wonder if he was, in fact, becoming _too_ comfortable, if the long peace was a sign of something worse yet to come. But as time wore on, and nothing particularly exciting happened except for one or two clandestine visits from Ciri, he finally started to feel at peace.

That was when the nightmares started.

At first they were innocuous enough—the kind of bad dreams that everyone had. He was used to chasing and being chased in real life, so even though he sometimes woke up with a racing heart, he didn’t think much of them, and they didn’t impact the life he’d built for himself. They were gone only minutes after he woke, and even if pressed he wouldn’t have been able to recall their contents with any sort of clarity.

As the weeks progressed, though, they slowly but surely became more disturbing. It started small. The nameless terrors he was forced to fight became monsters, ones he’d faced all too many times and, occasionally, even barely gotten away from. Those, too, transformed, until he was being haunted nightly by the faces of Eredin, of Vilgefortz, of Dettlaff van der Eretein, whom he’d forced one of his closest friends to kill. (He hadn’t seen Regis since then, either, and that thought was now painfully pushed to the forefront of his mind.) Every worry he’d ever had, every battle he’d ever fought, all tugged into his waking hours.

In the mornings, he would try to put them out of his mind. He’d think about them for a few minutes, let the thoughts run their course and disappear, and pray that would be enough. It never was. They lingered in his mind, resurfaced at the most inopportune moments, when he wasn’t able to be by himself, to hide his reactions from people. Some of the workers had already taken notice. Unfortunately for him, Yennefer had too.

“Geralt, if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, how am I supposed to be able to help you?”

He closed the book he’d been reading (or attempting to read) with a sigh and looked up at her. She was sitting across from him at the table, not paying attention to her own reading because she’d been studying him so intently. He’d thought he would never again be uncomfortable under her scrutiny, but he’d gotten so little sleep the past few days that he found himself easily becoming irritated by it.

“Couldn’t you just read my mind and find out? That’s what you always do anyway.”

He knew immediately it had been the wrong thing to say. Her face closed off, eyes devoid of emotion as she snapped the book shut. The sound was quiet, but it still managed to echo in the large main room of the house. “I assumed you didn’t want me to,” she said coldly as she stood. “I assumed we were past that. Forgive me for thinking otherwise.”

“Yen—” he started to say, but she was already gone, and the door swung behind her, letting in flashes of the late afternoon light. He knew he was being stubborn. He should’ve just told her, but he’d tried so hard to keep her from shouldering his burdens, to take them on himself as he felt he should. If he’d been more open, he had no doubt she would’ve figured out a way to help him. And it would be easy for her, with her extensive knowledge of magic, to think of something to try, even if it didn’t work. He was going to have to come up with one hell of an apology to get out of this one.

~

He left the house and took a walk around the farthest reaches of the vineyard, and when he came back, to his surprise, Yennefer was there, sitting at her previously vacated spot at the table. She didn’t look at him when he came in, but he saw her stiffen, grip her legs just a little tighter where her hands rested on them. There was a glass on the table in front of him. Even with his heightened senses, he couldn’t tell what was in it. He took his seat across from her and waited. It would be best, he thought, to let her speak first. After a moment, she did.

“When I first started staying here—when I moved in—I…” She paused, cleared her throat, staring at the table like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. It was rare for her to be so uncomfortable talking about something that she wouldn’t even look him in the eyes. To him, she’d always seemed unflappable. “I thought about Rivia often. At first it would only be at night, but after a while it got worse. This was the only thing that was letting me sleep.” She nodded towards the glass in front of her.

Geralt was dumbstruck, immediately slammed with guilt. He hadn’t even known. Yennefer had always been good at keeping her feelings to herself, but this was beyond anything he could’ve imagined from her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” It didn’t seem like the kind of thing he should be asking her, but he needed to know. He’d thought they were beyond keeping secrets.

She sighed, and finally looked up at him. Her lips twisted into something vaguely approximating a smile. “You already had enough to deal with,” she said. “Besides, I took care of it. And if this helped me, it’ll help you.” She nudged the glass forward just a touch, then settled her hand back on her leg. He glanced at it distastefully for only a few seconds before he turned his attention away.

“I could’ve helped you.”

“I know.” She laughed a little. Something had softened in her eyes since he’d seen her a few hours ago. He hoped it meant she wasn’t still upset. “And I can help you. This _will_ help.”

Slowly, keeping his eyes on her, he reached out and picked up the glass. The stuff seemed to coat his throat going down, and he still couldn’t tell what it was. When he set the empty glass down, she smiled, fully this time. “Things will be a lot easier,” she said ruefully, “if we just start helping each other.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh i feel like the end of this is kind of anticlimactic but i'm trying to keep these prompts chill?? or as chill as something like this can be lol. i might also expand this one in the future because i really enjoyed writing it
> 
> still taking prompts over on tumblr, though i have several that i've already got ideas for so i might have to post an updated card lol. it's probably obvious by now but i'm trying to alternate fandoms between chapters so there's not too much of one fandom, though depending on what prompts i get or come up with ideas for, that might change. i've got it planned through the first nine or ten though probably
> 
> (also i swear to god i'm still working on grand words, i'm just also doing nanowrimo - or trying to hit the word count across all my projects anyway - which means i'm working on Everything to be able to hit those word goals, and just happened to finish this first)


	5. The Empress's Last Resort (Part 1) (Dishonored - Definitely Just A Cold)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok with a prompt like this idk if i could've gone anywhere else.....so here we are with more sad corvojess shit. this time it's a sad au instead of sad canon though so there's that -bel

It started, as it always did, with a fever.

At first, Corvo didn’t even notice. It would’ve been the height of indecency to touch her in public—even in a casual manner—and lately Jessamine had taken to spending the nights alone, sitting at her desk and poring over reports on the plague. He could tell it was wearing her thin; he saw the lines of worry that had all but carved themselves into her face. After a week of such nights, he snuck into her office through the window and insisted she get some sleep. He even took the liberty (though it felt more like routine at this point) of accompanying her to bed, and it was only when she pressed her forehead against his shoulder, pulling the thick blankets tighter around herself, that he realized just how warm she was.

“Corvo, I’m fine,” she insisted, swatting his hand away when he tried to gauge her temperature. “Just stressed. I thought you said we were going to sleep.”

She sounded so exhausted then that he relented, rolled over and drifted off, sure that it was nothing.

A few days later, he woke in the Empress’s chambers to an empty bed. It was a strange occurrence; normally he was the one who had to shake Jessamine awake and then slip out before anyone realized he was there. When she shuffled back in from the bathroom, with the telltale deadly pallor of someone who’d just been sick, he jumped out of the bed and went to her immediately. Again, she brushed off his questions with a quick “I’m fine” as she pulled clothes out of her wardrobe.

There was a thought beginning to form in the back of his mind, and he wasn’t sure if he should voice it—what if it only upset her more?—but as the seconds turned into minutes he felt it struggling to be heard, and so—

“Jessamine, you don’t think it’s possible that you—?”

“No.” She spoke with such an air of finality that he was tempted to take her at her word, to let it alone and not ask again. “Corvo, the Tower’s been all but locked up for weeks now. There’s no way I could possibly…”

He understood why she let the statement trail off. Even though she was so sure it wasn’t true, neither of them wanted to say it, speak it into existence. Besides, he tried to reassure himself as he climbed out the bedroom window, she was right. No one who wasn’t cleared by security could enter the Tower anyway, and with the recent increase in outbreaks, security had only gotten tighter. Jessamine had all but stopped receiving visitors, and only interacted with those in Parliament and on her council. The plague wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near her. He just had to keep believing that.

~

Two days after that, the coughing began.

It was innocuous enough, the first few times, and the fits were over in a few seconds. She’d cough into her elbow, excuse herself politely, then continue with whatever she’d been doing. She conducted herself with such poise that no one would even guess that something bigger might be wrong. But as the next couple of days passed, the fits grew longer and more frequent, until one day she told Corvo to find her assistant, cancel all her meetings, and then return to her.

It was exactly the kind of thing he’d been dreading hearing from her. But he did it anyway.

When he returned to her room—into the office and through the windows, as usual—she was sitting on the side of the bed, facing the bookshelf that hid the door to the safe room. The Empress’s Last Resort, they called it in the rumors. He wondered if that was what it would become now.

She didn’t look at him when he rounded the corner of the bed to kneel down in front of her, trying to get at her eye level. His hands hovered over her own, clasped in front of her, wanting to touch but not daring to, not until he knew what she was going to say.

“I think,” she began slowly, “that you were right.”

It felt as though the ground had dropped out from under him; he could no longer trust that he would remain steady on his feet, and he was thankful he was already kneeling. When she did finally look at him her mouth was pinched into a line, her eyes shining and damp. She didn’t want to say it any more than he wanted to hear it. “Are you sure?” he replied hoarsely. “There’s got to be something we can do, some test we can run to figure out if you’ve really—”

“I do,” she interrupted. Her hands were shaking, and he wanted so badly to take them in his own, hold them until it stopped. But he couldn’t. There was already a voice in the back of his head telling him not to touch her, that he’d already been far too exposed to it—to her—and he hated himself for it. “Last night, after you left, I went to see Anton. When he told me, I…I hoped he was wrong. That all his tests and examinations had somehow produced a false result. I think he did, too. But he ran them all more than once. And every time, they said the same thing.”

“No,” he whispered, both to himself and to her. She pressed her hands against the outsides of her thighs to still them, and he watched the movement with a strangely detached sort of pain. Even when she was younger, she’d always felt that she needed to be strong for other people, to not let them know when she was hurting. It was, he supposed, a good trait for an Empress to have, but it stung to see her use those tactics now. “And there’s nothing we can do?”

“He said we could try putting me on heavier doses of elixir and seeing if that would help, but in all likelihood it’s too late to reverse its course.” Her voice was hollow, and she looked back down. Corvo suddenly realized that he would have to be the one to give this news to Emily, and something in his chest pulsed raw with pain. “The best thing to do at this point is to isolate me, and pray that no one else gets infected. I know, I don’t like it either,” she said, seeing the way his face twisted in a grimace. “But if I get someone else sick—if we can’t contain it…”

_The city goes up in flames._ Things were already bad enough outside the Tower walls. If the strain that had somehow gotten to Jessamine spread through the rest of the Tower, that was it for Dunwall. There would be no one left to lead them.

Unable to contain himself any longer, he reached out and grabbed her hands, clutching them tightly. Her fingers were thin, but her grip on him was equally strong. The edges of her ring pressed into his skin, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “What do you need from me?”

Jessamine swallowed thickly. Her next words seemed to come out slower than anything she’d said so far, as though they were being forcibly dragged out of her.

“Lock me in the safe room. And don’t let me out, no matter what you hear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok this is actually going to be continued with another prompt both because it was already getting kind of lengthy and because there's a great opportunity to use one of the other squares i have to finish this off - a couple of them would fit really well here. so the next dishonored prompt i post (ch 7) will be the second part of this
> 
> as usual, still taking prompts on tumblr, but idk how quickly i'll be able to get through the couple i already have?? nanowrimo is still a thing so i'm working on a lot of different projects at once


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